Dead Souls
by adelheid23
Summary: "New wearer, your skin is too delicious to resist." Set during the Deathly Hallows. Mature.
1. Chapter 1

_\- / -_

* * *

_"The inner state of his soul might be compared to a demolished building, which has been demolished so that from it a new one could be built; but the new one has not been started yet, because the infinitive plan has not yet come from the architect and the workers are left in perplexity."_ (Dead Souls, Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol)

* * *

It was a pact made between friends; each would wear the locket in turns.

To each, it would reveal their darkest fears, their most dreadful secrets, their greatest weakness.

To each, it was made obvious from the beginning that none would be spared.

The burden had to be carried. It had to be them. There was no one else.

The price was solitude, sorrow and separation, but they were willing to pay it.

The problem was only one; they had forgotten they were wearing a soul.

* * *

"I'm going to turn in, if you don't mind...I'm too tired to do anything."

Hermione looked up sharply from the table, as if she was seeing him through a screen of fog.

"I was going to tell you – you look awful, you should get some rest," she encouraged him in her self-assured manner.

In reality, she was the one who was broken down, awfully broken down, and needed rest.

Harry was still too shocked to respond to Ron's departure. She, on the other hand, was by now used to it and shrank inwardly every time Harry left the tent and she was all alone.

"Thanks. Don't stay up too late either. We have to move tomorrow."

"I know. I won't."

Hermione turned back to _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_. Another sleepless night awaited her and in the morning, a futile attempt to ignore the two-ness of their journey.

Perhaps it was different tonight, because it was her first night wearing the locket. The weight of it hadn't settled in yet, since she had only started wearing it that morning, but as the hours grew darker, she was beginning to feel a descent.

It was close to midnight when she got up from the table and went outside to get some fresh air.

It was cold and white outside, a whiteness that only a winter night could colour. The sky was made of milk and snow and the ground was frosted and smooth like alabaster.

She sat down by a tree stump and, shivering slightly, took out the pendant of the locket from her shirt and stared at it by the dim moon light.

It did not shine or reflect any sort of light. It was faded and ugly. She rubbed her thumb against it, feeling the warmth dissipate in the cold night air.

A stronger shiver ran through her, one that had nothing to do with the cold. She was in the presence of Evil and Evil was watching her through this locket. She slipped the pendant back into her shirt, where it molded with the patch of red skin it had left behind. Her chest heaved a sigh, but in doing so, moved the pendant across her skin in a slow circle. Suddenly, she was aching; from sadness, despair, anger, she did not know. There was an emptiness at her core, and the pendant, instead of filling it, was digging it deeper.

Hermione sighed again and the pendant glided smoothly over the same circle of skin. It was terrible, even amusing (in some bizarre, grotesque way) to think that Voldemort's soul was trapped between her breasts. It was a bit satisfactory, too, that one so powerful could fall so low. There, in the soft vibrant musk of her being, he tossed and turned and rebelled against the enclosure. Yet the rebellion was gentle; the locket was almost caressing the skin of her breasts. It was a clumsy caress, fumbling in the dark to cup her breasts, as if two hungry, but shy hands were hidden inside the pendant.

Hermione started, frozen in fear and ache.

She breathed hard, in and out.

It was all the Horcrux's curse. The pain she felt on her skin was not real. The touch was not there.

The night air cleared her head.

She concentrated on staying very still, so that the locket would not move with her.

She had to fight it without removing it. She had to prove to herself she could do it, withstand this trial.

She swore under her breath. The locket had moved again. She had done nothing. And the locket had moved.

Hermione got up and walked back to the tent.

She needed sleep, forced sleep, sleep that had to be stolen from her ever-vigilant mind.

But then, she was afraid of what she might dream.

* * *

_New wearer, your skin is too delicious to resist._

The voice pinned her to the sheets like a dead weight.

_It is dirty and defiled, reeking too much of Muggle blood, but in that stink there is perfume, a putrid essence that perverts the senses.  
_

Hermione shrieked, but a cold hand seemed to cover her lips.

_I wish you would not do that. Or at least, if you must scream, let it be my name. _

Hermione did not see his face. The hand seemed divorced from the body. All his limbs were ensconced in unreality. But his dark eyes, she felt them on her exposed skin. Why was she naked? She had gone to bed clothed.

It was a dream, a nightmare like any other, except she still felt the weight of the locket between her breasts.

_I am here, I am alive, I am inside you_, he whispered in her ear.

Hermione tried to wrench the locket from her skin.

_Let me tell you a secret. Even when you take it off, I will still be here. _

"No," she whispered. "I will wake up."

And then, the same hand that had covered her mouth parted her legs and two fingers dived between her folds.

_Who says you are asleep?_

She, the girl who had never been touched like this by anyone but herself, shuddered and cried out in anger. She felt betrayed by her own hands, which had been unable to do what he was doing now. She, who was young and, as they say, virginal, now felt old and experienced and _almost_ as ancient as he. She, who blushed and fumbled when affection was shown her, now took it all as a given, inevitable fact. She arched wildly and sighed, not even caring that she was naked. His fingers drew the same circles the pendant had traced across her skin.

She bit her lip hard when the circles grew wider and sharper, tasting her own blood on the tip of her tongue. The circles were everywhere; she was a circle herself, spinning on the axis of her own pleasure. Each one seeped into her skin and tipped against her pressure point, making her fingers claw at the sheets. When it was too much to bear, she moaned once, but the fingers stopped.

Hermione was about to protest, but she felt another hand on her neck.

_You won't moan until you say my name. _

His fingers slashed and flicked mercilessly now and prodded in with such dexterity that he almost wasn't touching her at all. Hermione choked on a sob which never reached out, because his other hand was still pressing down on her neck.

Hot tears fell down her cheeks, because her pleasure was growing too torturous, too horrible and she had to let it sink inside her, culminate and finish in silence, a life unlived. She couldn't take it; she bundled up the sheets and pushed them aside, cried soundlessly, on and on as the fingers swam inside her warmth without relenting. She wanted to tear out her skin, make herself disappear.

_Say my name and I will let you come apart. _

Hermione shook her head, biting her tongue so hard that she felt it break inside her mouth into pieces of dead flesh. She had to spit it out. She _had_ to. But if she did, she knew she would be calling out his name.

_You ought to know by now, you will do as I say. You want to say my name. Your tainted blood begs for it, can't you hear it? Oh, Mudblood, your mind is the witness of so much knowledge, yet your body is an uncharted map. They all value your words, but I will cherish your screams._

Hermione kept shaking her head, a torrent of tears wetting her hair as she thrashed under his touch.

_I know, it is always a struggle. You've tried so hard to make them love you. You learned their language and for a while, you spoke it so well. What happened? Why did they not love Hermione Granger? Why is it that, all her efforts have come undone?_

Hermione trembled. Her hands suddenly reached out to touch the one around her neck, but her fingers only touched air.

_Well, _he chuckled_, no one can love a Mudblood._

His fingers left her core, finally. She sighed with relief, feeling now only a damp coldness where his hand used to be.

But his other hand was still holding her neck.

"You're wrong," she whispered through her teeth.

She could not see a face, but she could see a smile.

_Do you think anyone will love you after this?_

And then both his hands were wrapped around her thighs, holding onto her as if he were about to float away. She could feel him, a dark mass of pain and pleasure, standing between her legs, preparing his feast, and then his breath was on her mound, tickling the wet hairs, and his tongue slithered down her folds like a snake that was spitting out its poison before slowly eviscerating his victim. He only licked at first, drawing circles, more circles that turned her world into a sphere.

Hermione was free to cry out now, but it was as if a weight was constricting her throat.

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

She shut her eyes and imagined what it would be like to run her hands through his hair, to push him deeper inside of her.

But she was not imagining it. Her hands had somehow traveled down to where he was and she could feel the soft locks intertwining between her fingers. She did not marvel for long. She pulled and tugged at them, until he began to bite and chew, eating, devouring, eviscerating. No longer slithering quietly, but pouncing menacingly.

She pushed him further and further, until his tongue was devoured too, by her. And he smiled against her heat, making sure his mouth was another perfect circle against her skin.

_No one, Hermione. No one will love you after this. But you will choose this anyway. And you will scream my name._

His fingers joined his tongue in a dizzying dance that left her more broken, more empty, more shattered than any pain she had felt, any sorrow she had witnessed, any pleasure she had been given.

It was more than any absence, more than any disappointment. Ron had asked her to come with him, but he had left before she had had the chance to tell him she had already come with him all this way. He had left her, knowing she would wear the necklace, knowing perhaps that -

"T-Tom..." she moaned, defeated. "Tom. Tom. Tom."

_Knowing you would be mine_, he finished the thought for her.

"I - Yes... Please, Tom...Please, _Tom_!"

It felt right to spell it out and brush away all other names. It felt right to give this to him and imagine he had no other name.

She screamed once more as she came undone around his tongue. Each circle broke into a wave and each wave broke against another circle, and that circle crashed into another wave and it was endless. Endlessly crashing, endlessly breaking. She could feel the snake inside her, being squeezed by her walls until all his poison was soaked into her marrow.

She accepted the poison, just as she accepted the vital truth. _No one will love me after this. _

It almost made her feel proud. She was sated and loveless and fallen.

He lapped at the juices trickling down her legs, drinking from the essence he loathed and adored, and she imagined, drinking her very soul.

But then, she did not know where her soul ended and his began.

* * *

When Harry left the tent next day, she no longer felt alone.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N**: Against my better judgement (I am already working on other stories), I decided to continue this because something about it keeps calling to me and I have to let it out. Thanks to the reviewers and readers for the feedback (thanks to **Elm **&amp; **Gle** for their anonymous reviews, I'm glad the story has made an impression).

**Big Warning**: non-con and dubious consent from hereon so if this is triggering, I suggest you steer clear.

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* * *

Daylight made everything ugly, she'd discovered.

Perhaps the weight on her chest also turned her world a little grey, but there was something incomparably cruel about mornings.

She had used to love mornings at Hogwarts; waking up early before everyone else, walking down the empty corridors, listening to the unheard sounds of the castle.

Now, it was a chore getting out of bed and making her breath fall evenly with every step.

This morning was worse because Harry was giving her that knowing look of his, the one mixed with pity and concern. He thought she was suffering on account of Ron. He imagined she felt his absence more acutely.

He was wrong. And for once, she was glad he could not see he was wrong.

For a third night in a row, she had dreamt - although, calling them dreams made them all too real - about Tom Riddle. No, she wouldn't say Voldemort because this had so little to do with the dark wizard they were currently on the run from.

Of course, nothing and everything.

This ghost - because what else was he? - this piece of soul, this harbinger of death whose name was a mongrel of muggle and pureblood, had entered her mind via Horcrux and was twisting her body and bending her thoughts into destructive and base directions. It was a slow dance with the devil, only it wasn't quite slow and it wasn't quite a dance; it was a mad chase, and he was not a devil, for a devil makes you choose your fate before damning you.

She had not been given a choice. She had been taken in, made to taste the forbidden, and now she was too far over to tell a soul. Because truly, if she were made to choose again this time around, she would choose the same. Not by the ugly light of morning. But by that soft, serpentine light of night. In that hour, she would open her arms to him and consider herself chained, if only to ignore her conscience.

But there was no point using euphemisms; Tom Riddle was seducing her.

Seduction; such a ludicrous notion. But there it was.

Perhaps she had been vulnerable and ripe for the taking after Ron's departure, perhaps she was too young, too smart for her own good. Perhaps no one could really resist him.

From what Harry had told her during their Sixth Year, she had expected a charmer, someone who sought power at any costs, using people without much consideration for their integrity, and she had not been wrong, but she had never thought he would stoop to something..._like this_.

She could not spell it out, what he did exactly that made the seduction so insidious. It was not just the physicality, although -

(She bucked as his tongue drew lazy circles around her nipples, his teeth applying pressure gently, slowly. They never sank into her skin, only showed her the possibility.

_I will make you my slave, little tainted mud-whore_.)

\- although the physicality _helped_ and, for someone as inexperienced as she, it increased the potency of his person.

No, beyond this, his voice, his words (that goddamn tongue) did things to her, woke up some dormant being that should have stayed locked up.

It was her ugly, ugly face, ugly as the morning. It was the face of the eleven year-old who liked to recite Potions ingredients in front of her schoolmates to make them feel inferior, it was the face of the sixteen year-old who had hexed her best friend out of jealousy, it was the face of the fourteen year-old who had turned a woman into an insect and kept her in a jar, it was the face of the fifteen year-old who had created so powerful a curse that a girl's face had been irremediably damaged - at all ages, her ugly face was tremendously powerful and shameful to her, but appealing to him.

And it was _continuing_, this horrible seduction, because she had let it go on for three nights now.

For a deep, unknowable reason, she had not removed the locket once from her neck.

Hermione was aware this was probably what Tom Riddle _wanted_, but his desires and hers must have met somewhere in between, because she felt more than reluctant to part with it, as if they had started something and she needed to see it to the end, so as not to make the surrender pointless.

Her mind had easily conjured the pretext of friendship to silence her guilt; she was sacrificing herself for Harry's sake, Harry, who was tormented by so many demons that he could use a break from Voldemort, Harry, who was so diligently selfless and stubborn that, he would probably choose to wear that thing all the time and spare her even one second of misery. The same Harry who had no idea she had betrayed him.

And that she would betray him again tonight.

* * *

_Are you ready to call yourself mine?_

Hermione's arms were held above her head in a deathly grip. His pale form now looked more vivid, more _real_, as he stood over her, naked but dressed in shadows.

_Or must I coax you?_

His face should have terrified her, half-skull, half-skin. She could see bones jutting out through his cheeks. But instead of wanting to turn away, she wanted to lean into them, until they grazed her own skin.

He looked unfinished, with one red and one black eye, switching places, becoming one when he looked at her so that she almost never saw both of them separately. She grew dizzy and faint, but she kept looking.

His mouth was half-lip, half-forked tongue. He was all halves. And his skin, blue like a cadaver, shone with a cold fire.

But _Gods_, that forked tongue. Her core still throbbed. She was reeling from her latest orgasm.

"I could - I could say it, but I know it's not true. It's not real." She wasn't sure if she was denying him because she knew it was the right thing to do, or because she wanted to see what he would do.

_You do enjoy a bit of a struggle, don't you?_

"You're only a Horcrux and once we destroy it, your influence will die with it," she replied calmly, although she was buzzing with excitement.

_And until then?_

She swallowed. "Until then... I - I don't care."

She could hear, more than see, a smile. His breath on her stomach was in the shape of a smirk.

_You don't care what?_

"It's not real," she repeated stubbornly, "so I don't care what you do with me."

Her boldness was more an effect of arousal, but he seemed to be enjoying it, as his fingers traced her hips in an almost gentle caress.

_You will._

This was the first night he plunged into her.

She had not expected it, she had not even thought it possible. But all of a sudden, she was filled up. She was filled up with pain and desire.

His hips slammed against hers without mercy or warning and she screamed. His blue skin rubbed against hers and the burn of his touch drew blood.

She screamed again. Pain and desire.

"Please, don't!"

She begged and cursed, shutting her eyes tight, but he was there, whispering sweet nothings in her mouth, biting her lip, breathing her air. At first she thought he was trying to comfort her, but after a while, it was clear he was spilling more poison through another opening.

What mattered was that he was _inside_ her.

Her body vibrated with anger and lust as he drove her closer to the edge.

The forked tongue was in her mouth. She bit it hard.

He stood back for a moment and slipped out of her. Only a moment. Enough to smile down at her with one red and black eye and a forked tongue.

_Will you call yourself mine now?_

Hermione spat into his face. She wanted to say yes.

"Never."

When he sank into her once more, she grasped his body in her arms and carved the skin of his back with her fingers. Her nails drove into him with the same speed and alacrity as himself inside her.

Hermione cried out desperately. She was mourning her will, her innocence. Whatever was left of it.

He fucked her. Seduction momentarily delayed. He just fucked her.

He remained silent all throughout, only his breathing on her neck giving indication of his participation. She screamed and moaned and spoke for both of them.

But she said nothing, a string of words without meaning, because he would not stop and she did not want it to stop. Yet she had never hated herself and the world more.

When she came, she tore at her own face. Her nails drove into her own skin.

_My little tainted mud-whore. My lovely little muggle bitch. How I wish to taste thee..._ he recited with glee.

He bent down and collected her juices and lapped at the blood dripping down her leg. His forked tongue was red with her blood.

Hermione shuddered and tried to push him away, but he clung to her bones.

_I am tainted too now, new wearer. I have tasted your darkest blood. And I will taste it again._

"Why?" she expelled hoarsely, fighting the stream of tears in her eyes.

_Because you are wearing my soul. I must have yours in return._


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N**: So this is still happening for anyone interested. I see many of you favorited this story, so thank you for that. I hope you enjoy the third chapter.

The usual warning about dubious consent still stands.

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* * *

Her skin was bitter cold and swollen. Every inch of it screamed, every muscle hurt. Movement was a chore. Harry noticed her discomfort. The way her body floated listlessly.

"You all right, Mione?"

"Yes, I think I got a cold. It's nothing serious."

Harry put a comforting hand on her shoulder. They sat at the table together, looking over maps of the Ministry and Gringotts bank. She could feel his worried eyes on her and the way they lingered with pity. She bristled.

"Stop that. Stop looking at me like I'm falling apart."

"You know you don't have to hold it in -"

"There's _nothing_ to hold in. We left many people behind. Some are...not worth thinking about. What _is_ worth thinking about is where we are going next."

Hours later, Harry was still unable to look away from her.

Growing tired, she rose and pointed at their beds.

"Let's just go to sleep. It'll get better."

But she sat up with her knees drawn to her chest and watched Harry sleep. She would try to stay awake for as long as possible. The necklace was still safely resting on her T-shirt. If she eschewed sleep altogether, maybe her skin would be less cold, less swollen.

_Of course, you could always take the necklace off_, a treacherous voice whispered in her head.

_Not that. Anything but that_, she answered back.

* * *

Tonight, he made her lie on her stomach. She couldn't see him at all. It should be a relief, not to grow small and wretched under the vile glaze of his black-red eye. And yet, she wanted to turn her head and see. Seeing is believing, after all.

Her body felt that he was staring from a vantage point, a place she could not reach. Perhaps it was the deepest corner of her mind.

He did not touch her at all, he only stared.

She waited for him to do something as she stood with her cheek pressed to her pillow, biting her lips until they drew blood. She parted her legs a little. They had grown stiff.

But much to her shame –

_You're wet. And I didn't have to do anything, Mudblood. _

She was certain, certain he was doing this. It was not her. Her body could not react without a mind. You could not feel excitement without a stimulus. Could you?

_I could probably make you come with my voice alone._

She would not give him the satisfaction tonight. She would not. Hermione began reciting a long and laborious list of years in her head; the Goblin battles. She drew them up from memory and focused on them and on Professor Binns' voice, droning in and out like the monotonous buzzing of a fly.

_The 1612 Goblin Rebellion took place near Hogsmeade; in fact, the cellars of The Three Broomsticks were used as headquarters for the rebels to store provisions and..._

She could feel sweat gliding down her forehead as her mind made the Sisyphean effort to continue her history lesson.

_Let me tell you, dearest tainted one, how history will go._

Hermione lifted her palms. She wanted to stuff her ears, so she wouldn't hear, but a sudden jolt snapped through her and her muscles screamed. She was pinned down by his voice.

_No, no. I need you to pay attention. I will only say it once. Now, where was I?_

His voice picked at her brain and scattered everything she knew about Goblins, wars and history. There was only him left inside her head. That was how it felt in that moment. Her sole knowledge was the knowledge of his voice.

_They will all feel as empty as you feel right now. Their minds and bodies will serve no purpose. They will writhe in their graves for my voice. _

Hermione gritted her teeth.

_Your friends, your family, your loved ones, the strangers you smiled at once out of kindness...the people you will never know. Think of them as flesh that will be burned and scoured. Purified. Made into nothing once more. Their purest form._

She let out a treacherous moan against her will.

_The lecherous Squibs, the decrepit, mongrel Halfbloods – oh yes, even **my** kind -, the unnameable, unmentionable, unbearable lumps of flesh known as Muggles, the lofty and putrid Purebloods, corrupt to their very blood, the inbetweens, inborn, inbred, all inverted and induced. The grotesque carnival of the world. They will scratch at their own entrails, awaiting depletion, laceration, evisceration. _

She knew she was sopping wet. She could feel her juices gliding down her leg into a warm pool on the cold sheet. She shuddered and hissed with pleasure.

_As for Mudbloods..._

Her breath hitched in her throat.

_I will give them to my snake. They will be swallowed and dissolved inside of her, made into venomous juices, coursing through her, making her stronger... _

By now it was in vain hiding her flushed skin or making an effort to remain silent.

She yelped as she felt her core shaking.

"Please..." she muttered, although she did not know what she was asking for.

_And then she will spit them out into the world, to poison others. As she grows and grows, the rest will weaken and wilt. But poison is still poison. It does not live or die. A fitting end for a race that should have never been, don't you think?_

Through the haze of wild pleasure, a rational thought glimmered at the bottom of her mind. She felt a protest bubbling behind her lips.

"No..." The rest of her words died in a frenzy. She squeezed her thighs, sucking in her breath. She wanted to feel that voice inside of her. She blushed with humiliation. Anger and lust festered under her skin and threatened to break out.

"I – I won't be poison," she stammered with all her strength.

A dark cold laugh made her skin crawl.

_My sweet dirty child, whoever said you would?_

Hermione was momentarily startled. The waves of pleasure seemed to stay. Her mind was clear for a split second.

"You. You said it."

_I spoke about __**them**__. Not about you. You think I would let you slip through my fingers and give you away? No. Not when I just found you. _

"But I'm a –"

_I know the depths of your squalor better than anyone else. You are dirtier than mud. Perhaps...perhaps you already are poison._

"What will you do with me?"

The voice halted. She spent moments in agony and silence, waiting for a sound, begging to hear him again.

_I will keep you for myself. _

Hermione bit down on her tongue and screamed. His words parted her nether lips and entered her.

_It will be only you and me. The rest will be bodies and fire and filth. I'm only keeping you. Just you. Alive. _

Hermione knew she was close. She squeezed her eyes shut and sank her toes in the mattress.

"W-Why?"

He laughed again. The echo rolled off her skin painfully.

_Because you are my dirty little mudwhore. You are the filth under my feet. I won't be alone anymore. I made that mistake once. No. This time, I want to __**indulge**__._

Her breath came out like a choke.

_I want to taste your tainted skin whenever I like, I want to drink your foul blood as I please, and make you taste yourself too. I want to fuck you over a sea of corpses. _

Hermione cried out and moved her hips in a chaotic rhythm.

_You can see it, can't you? You can __**feel**__ it._

She whimpered in her pillow and shook her head.

_You want me to do it. You want me to obliterate them. All of them. Except you. Only you. It drives you mad. Say it._

"I – please, no – I can't..."

_Say it. You want me to fuck you over their bodies. Say it._

The pressure was too much for her. She howled and her muscles contracted with release. She wanted to weep with joy.

"I want...yes!" she cried out. "Yes!"

But his voice suddenly stopped slithering in her ear and she was left cold. Her pleasure had been cut short, wrenched from her so roughly that she felt scraped to the bone. Her insides demanded the rest. Her core pulsed with frustrated want and in that one moment she didn't care. She didn't care.

"Please...please, _Tom_."

The silence was obstinate.

She knew what he wanted.

"I want – I want you to – please don't make me say it."

But she could already see light creeping into the tent. Dawn was edging closer and closer. Harry would wake up soon. This feral, dark and free world would be gone. And her release would never come.

"Oh, God...Don't do this to me."

She could hear the forest stirring to life. No, no this couldn't happen.

"F-fuck me. I want you to fuck me...over their bodies."

_I know. _

The wisp of his voice trailed down her skin almost gently. She squirmed into it, her contractions getting closer and closer.

_I will._

"Hermione. Hermione!"

Her eyes snapped open.

Harry was standing over her, his glasses perched precariously atop his nose.

"You were shouting in your sleep."

Hermione blinked several times, trying to adjust to the light.

"You okay?"

"I – yeah, just a nightmare. Sorry."

Her skin was cold. The necklace was lying limpid against her skin. But under the covers, deep down where no one could see, she was red hot. Her panties were wet. There was a wet stain on her sheets. She was throbbing, still.

"Come on. Give me the necklace. You've worn it long enough."

But Hermione slapped his hand away more forcefully than necessary.

"No, Harry. I _need_ to wear it. For both our sakes."

Her friend said nothing more. Something in her wild eyes must have silenced him.

She wondered if he too heard that dreadful, cold laughter in the distance.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N**: another very disturbing chapter for your pleasure. I see more people are reviewing and I'm very grateful. Thanks to **Reader** (there is story too, slowly emerging!), **Anon** (I'm glad Tom is chilling, that's the idea and thanks for taking a look at my other stories) &amp; **Guest** for the anonymous reviews.

Careful what you read. Dubious consent as always. Also, Tom Riddle is one manipulative bastard. Let me know what you think.

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* * *

Self-loathing. It used to be something foreign, something she assigned to young women who had not had the good luck to love books, go to magic schools and have the two best friends in the world.

Well, one currently.

Hermione had always been too busy to feel bad about herself, too tangled in her own pride to be concerned with these _trivial_ things. Even her ugly face, that ugly face that made her curse and throw wicked spells that turned people into insects - she had always felt a little proud of that face.

And for every wicked thing, there had been time-turners and house elves and Umbridges and Potion exams and large loving cats and Ron's freshly-snowed hair coming from a game of winter Quidditch to distract her.

Now, alone with herself, in this great dark gap inside her, she felt self-loathing for the first time. It frightened her, how sharp it was. How deep it travelled and how easily it undressed all her faces.

But a new day was upon her and she had to make do.

She went through the motions; eating breakfast with Harry, packing, moving on.

New spells, new concealments, new camping spots, new frustrations.

The problem was, she was starting to hear his voice during the day.

At first she thought it was the wind in the trees or the hum of the radio. But when she cast her eyes over the page of her book she heard it clearly.

_Old wearer, your skin has become too familiar not to partake of._

Hermione turned a page and closed her eyes for a moment, turning all thoughts away, but the voice only became louder.

_Old wearer, you must never let another touch this necklace._

"Shut up," she spoke under her breath. _You'll be destroyed soon, you'll be nothing but a bad dream_, she thought with rehearsed confidence.

_But you won't let that happen, old wearer. You will preserve me. You will wear me. Forever. _

She got up and started pacing. Harry was still out, trying to get some firewood.

It was simple; all she had to do was wrench that horrible thing from her neck and throw it on the ground. Harry would understand.

But she would not let Harry wear it – _no_, not because Tom Riddle had said so – but because she never wanted Harry to see what she had seen.

So, then?

The only solution was to take it off and hide it. But, if Harry thought they'd lost it, he'd fall into a worse depression. He was already miserable about Ron.

Yet, if she kept on wearing it – no, she could not keep on wearing it.

Then, the only thing left was to destroy it _now_.

She had to do it on her own. This was _her_ task. She had been too tainted for this to be someone else's burden.

Harry might destroy other Horcruxes, this was hers.

Quite suddenly, she realized she would probably have to leave Harry too. In order to fight it on her own.

It was unimaginable to leave her friend in this desert of loneliness. Of course, she would leave him the tent and she could make him a custom magical bag where she could store so many useful objects for him and gosh! she should make him some food too –

She shook her head. "You're already planning on leaving him! What lunacy! Stop it. Wait it out. One more night. It might just be this dreadful locket speaking and you need rest."

These self-assuring speeches used to work. Only days ago, she would have smiled to herself. Logical Hermione Granger is a clear-headed optimist. No longer.

_Old wearer, you will preserve me. And you will join me_, the voice whispered as she sat down back to her reading.

* * *

That night, she asked Harry to watch over her sleeping. She promised she would do the same for him. "I – I know it's a very strange request, but ever since Ron, I've been having nightmares. Please wake me up, if you see me thrashing."

Harry agreed, but strangely, did not bring up the necklace again. Either he had forgotten that Hermione was wearing it, or was so tired and dejected that the only thing he could do was slump down in a chair by Hermione's bed with his chin in his palm.

She squeezed his hand and then turned her back to him and pulled her blankets over her head.

* * *

"Gods, why do you make the Mudblood's tainted stream so warm, so welcoming?"

His voice no longer seemed ethereal and confined to her inner being.

He was now not only a solid body, but a solid voice.

Harry was gone. He was sitting in the chair next to her bed.

Tom Riddle, whose beauty cut like a knife, whose immaculate features spoke of immensities of malice hidden underneath. His white-blue skin, the skin of a daring, but intellectual schoolboy, the manicured hands of a narcissist, the nose of a passionate, hateful lover, the eyes of an Icarus, defying all fathers and the sun itself.

He was not one to be loved, or even to be drawn to.

You'd swim away from him like you'd swim away from frozen fjords, but you'd marvel, you'd marvel at them and you'd wish – you'd half-wish you were sunken deep in those frozen fjords anyway.

Suddenly, life before this moment was a bleak page from one of her dull little books. The friends, the cats, the Potion classes, the two best friends. All well and good. The only thing that mattered was lying around her neck. It was only through the necklace that she could feel this absolute certainty that her life now had meaning.

She was like a servant watching the master through a screen shield. She knew it was a trick of mirrors, that the master needed his servants to thrive, but she still believed blindly in his power, even if she knew he had no real power over her.

How to explain possession without being possessed?

She rose from the bed and sat on his lap warily. He had not invited her, but she couldn't stand the way he scrutinized her sleep. And there seemed to be no other viable space than his legs.

He snaked a hand around her waist and held her lightly to him.

"Now, tell me, do you know why you are the most cherished being alive?"

Hermione pursed her lips.

"I don't care to know."

"Ah, you already have the pride of someone who is cherished by me."

"You're saying that because you think I want to be liked by you, but I don't," she said, to no one in particular. She wasn't even looking at him. She was staring back at her old life and weeping inside.

"No, I suppose you want me to cut through your skin and suck the life out of you, little Mudwhore."

"Why would I ever want that?"

"Because you're still wearing me."

"I have to."

"Do you?" He rubbed his nose against her neck. She trembled.

"Yes."

"Why?"

He parted her nightdress and his hand travelled across her thighs into her core gently, but abruptly, like a pair of scissors.

"B-Because then H-Harry –"

"Yes. He is so lucky to have you as a friend."

"Must we do this - must we - ?" she asked desperately.

"You call to me, I answer. I wouldn't be here if you did not want me. You are sly to think you are faultless."

"I don't want you to be here."

"Yes, you just want me inside you."

His finger had been replaced brutally by him. His length. A horrid, nasty lover. He plunged into her with the medieval cruelty of his ancestors, the Slytherins.

She held onto him, burying her head on his shoulder. She felt nothing but pain, laceration, shame, but somehow they all felt good, they all felt...like _him_.

His hardness was a caress, and his caress was the lash of a whip.

"Will you come to me soon?" he asked, through pants.

It was a double entendre, but she did not smile.

"I – I don't know. No."

"Make sure you don't get killed while you do it. I want you whole. So that when I cut pieces, I feel that I am breaking what once used to be a vestige."

She did not cry or moan like past times.

She panted like him, like an animal, chasing quick pleasure, guiding his hands to her breasts and begging him to knead and pinch.

"Why m-me? Why not Ron or H-Harry?"

"Yes, intriguing question. I could have seduced them easier perhaps. Harry is already half in love, half in hate with the idea of me. He wishes to save the young me and kill my old weak self. He would be a faithful lover. Ronald…well he would be a jealous, possessive lover. He would want me only for himself. He would cry and throw tantrums and accept me far too easily. You, however… you are neither. You do not wish to save me, or vanquish me. You do not wish to accept me or keep me to yourself. All you want, little Mudblood, is to feel _alive_…that is all you wish. And to that, I can respond. I too...I too...want..."

Their tandem became increasingly erratic and he was faster than her, came first and howled his pleasure selfishly, but his deft fingers found her again and made her sing too.

And then, when all was quiet, he started kissing her hair, her neck, her breasts, the inside of her wrists – so gently and lovingly that she pulled away thinking it was not him.

His tongue was caressing her collarbone. But the man underneath her was far asleep, clinging to her like a dead man.

His glasses had fallen in his lap, but his hands moved over her naked back.

Hermione jumped out of his embrace as if she had been scalded.

Horribly, unthinkably, the first thought in her mind was _No! I am his! Not yours to touch!._

But the second thought, the deeper thought was _I am doomed. And I've doomed Harry too.  
_

Harry was still, thankfully, asleep. He had no idea what had happened, or what he had done, unconsciously or not. His hands now dangled helplessly on each side of the chair.

_Old wearer, you are mine and mine alone. His touch was only a shadow. He can never have you. No one. __But me. _

_Be still. Be quiet. He is asleep. Do not wake him. He did nothing. He is the faithful lover, I told you. But you will leave him anyway, won't you? Come. Come quickly. _

She went out into the darkness of the early dawn and threw up.

Perhaps this was Tom's punishment or beckoning, the final proof that she needed to expunge this demon herself.

She had to leave. And she had to take the locket with her.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N**: just in case you were wondering, this fic remains as fucked up as ever. Thanks to all the people who have reviewed and read, you guys fuel this perverse experiment. Anyway, all the usual warnings apply. Please share your thoughts.

* * *

\- / -

* * *

Stumbling through snow, swallowing it as it fell into her mouth.

This was the path to perdition.

Her steps, sometimes slow and timeless, sometimes fast and careless, took her further away from the world, further away from herself and her mission.

She still clung blindly to the locket and the belief that she could destroy it, but her mind was growing restless and weary, with no clear end in sight, no boundary where it might stop.

The lands had grown voices in early spring and as she sat by a low fire in the middle of nowhere, she could hear the raw fresh roots springing from the ground, seeking renewal, rebirth. Nature was thirsty. She held her hand over the fire. The locket was in her palm. The night sky was milky white. If she let the hand linger, would it get burned or would the locket protect her?

She could take it off now. It would make no difference. He was inside her no matter where the locket dwelt. She heard him and felt him just as well without it. It would not leave her and she could not leave it.

_Bad idea. This was all a bad, bad idea._

But it was too late to turn back, and she was determined in her own way to go down with the poison, rather than inflict it on others.

A year ago, this time around, she would have probably been lying in her Gryffindor bed, listening greedily to Parvati and Lavender tell stories of their little conquests and girlhood happiness.

_Well, no. Lavender would be talking about Ron. I'd shutter my ears._

What about now?

It struck her with no negligent amount of pain that she had not thought of the redhead boy in a good long time. In fact, this was the first time in weeks.

Maybe he was always there, ever present, like – like _Tom_.

But Ron could not harm her, not anymore.

Whereas Tom could _only_ harm her, now and forever.

* * *

Would they come searching for her?

They -? Well, only Harry. Only he knew she had left. Only he knew that she needed to be found, that she was not at the centre of her universe anymore. Of course, he didn't know _why_ she had gone.

He would wonder what had gone wrong, and blame himself and feel utterly miserable and finally, he would think he drove her away. He would think "Ron and Hermione were right to leave me. I need to do this alone."

Such thoughts almost made Hermione want to turn around and return to him.

But every time, she was pulled back by the knowledge that she didn't want to be found. That Harry finding her would be the worst thing for him.

So she stayed under the cover of darkness, watching the fire die out, flame by flame. Her heart shrank every time sleep tempted her eyelids.

That night, the fifth – if she was counting, and she was – of her departure, she lay down once again in her tent and let the freezing cold seal her body from dreams.

Just like every other time, she felt invaded and forever touched in twisted ways. The bottom of the world fell off and she was in a hazy world of sinful recollections.

Except, well, this time around Tom wasn't alone.

The tent was pulled back. She was dragged out of the tent and spat out on the cold ground, flakes of dry snow tangling in her hair.

Her wand broken with a sickly crunch under barbarous feet.

The Snatchers pulled her up to her feet and slapped her once, twice, thrice until her cheeks rang with blood. Boots kicked her stomach and elbows hit the small of her back.

_Not possible. I would never let them catch me. Never, _she thought with detached calm as they trampled on her body.

Tom leaned back against the smoky birches in the distance and watched the unfurling spectacle, his eyes aglow with hunger and mirth.

_A little pain before pleasure_, he spoke into her ear.

Hermione tasted the copper tang on her lips and got ready to wake up. But she wasn't going to wake up. She wasn't even going to be allowed to fall unconscious. Sleep and dreams were a luxury.

The Snatchers apparated with her between their grubby arms.

Tom was still watching, and at the last moment, before she disappeared into the ether, he blew her a kiss.

* * *

Two parallel lines had met at last.

She was being dragged through vast expanses of space and time, but her lucidity was compromised by the constant whisper of his voice in her ears.

(_Don't trouble your mind. You are safe. Let yourself be taken away. Like you've always wanted._)

She could not be fully _here_, fully open, awake. If he was with her, she must have been somewhere between shadow and light, but not _here_. It was not possible.

How could a voice in your head become a reality? How could a locket give birth to a Monster-Man?

But this was, despite all reservations, despite all doubt and second-guessing, a _real_ house. The air she was breathing in was stale, old, but _real_. The room was real and so was the queen-size bed. She did not know where, but she knew _what_. And what it was, was a rich family house, the kind that must have belonged to a Pureblood, the kind that had oil paintings hanging from every wall and ornate mantelpieces with family crests and tapestries covering the parlor tables, and labyrinthine mazes in its backyard.

She heaved over the sheets, but she could not empty her stomach. Drops of blood fell between her fingers. She had forgotten about her broken lip. She licked the blood hungrily.

Hours passed in this strange recognizance of what belonged to the real and what did not. Was she really hurt? Had she really been beaten? Or was this just an illusion, another ill fable to trick her into believing she was weak? Into believing she should submit?

Was she still freezing in her tent and all of this was an elaborate punishment? Had her previous life been a dream and she was finally waking up in her castle? Had the last few months been a nightmarish escapade and she was finally back in the dormitory, eager to hear girlhood stories?

Was this her true home? Was she a Pureblood, secretly? Was she hateful, like him? Was she – the locket?

* * *

"I do apologize for having you harmed. But you would not go down without a fight. I expect nothing less. Of course, you are _not_ going to battle me. You cannot. And what is more, you do not want to."

Hermione stirred.

She was no longer lying on the bed.

The warm feel of roughly-hewn threads under her cheeks. The texture of wool and grass. She was kneeling on the rug, by the fireplace. Yet no, there was no fire behind the metal grates. She felt no pressing hotness on her back.

Candles flickered in their wicks behind him, casting his figure in shadows.

But it was not Tom she was looking at, and no trick of the light could hide that.

He was sitting in a carved armchair, petting his beloved snake, cooing to her in a strange hiss.

Lord Voldemort in all his bleak, ugly glory.

When she raised herself on her elbows and chanced to look up, she saw a blur of red eyes and contorted features.

"Are you going to kill me?" she asked in a voice that trembled too much to be hers.

Voldemort let the snake cross his knees and his hands settled on its scales, drumming on them softly.

"Is that what you want, Miss Granger?"

Hermione wanted to laugh. He had no power over her. He was _no_ Tom. His voice sounded raspy, faint and feeble, like a fatherly schoolteacher's drone. He could not touch her, could not corrupt her. He was rotting and dead inside and he could no more affect her than the rug under her palms.

"No. But you will probably do it anyway, seeing as you're not overly fond of Mudbloods or friends of Harry Potter's," she spoke quickly, unable to still the tremor in her voice. She wished she could have expressed how little she feared him, but old habits died hard and she still felt a degree of knee-jerk terror in his presence.

"I find myself disappointed, Miss Granger, for that is quite an incorrect conclusion you draw. I know your mind is not average, unfortunately. So you ought to remember what I told you and judge your fate more accurately."

Hermione licked her broken lip.

"We've never spoken before."

He chuckled, and it sounded rather like the rattle of bony fingers scratching at the ceiling of a tombstone. She did not know if the image had come unbidden to her mind or if Tom had planted it there.

Tom, who was not this ugly decrepit fiend.

Tom...who was better? Worse? Much worse.

"Yes, I suppose we did not. Words were not uppermost in our meetings."

_Ha. You don't fool me. You're not him. You might pretend. But Tom is a memory. And you are whole. And I'd rather it were the other way around. Actually, I'd rather you were both dead and gone and nothing, but then I would be dead and gone and nothing too.  
_

Maybe she should, maybe she _ought_ to, but he seemed to have other plans.

He rose from his chair. The snake slithered at his feet, but he cast it off like an old cloak and the pet moved away, encouraged to approach Hermione.

She gasped and rolled back on the carpet, but Nagini only wished to be acquainted.

The snake stopped right in front of her panting mouth and pressed its wet tip under her chin.

Hermione froze and waited for several suspended moments, the agony of the prey. Then, she felt a lick, a short slick lick under her chin. A forked tongue. It buried a hole inside her. The venom trailed down her skin.

This was the snake Tom had told her about, the snake who would swallow the entrails of her dirty kind and become stronger. _They will be swallowed and dissolved inside of her, made into venomous juices..._

She shrieked and got up hastily, running towards the bed.

But Lord Voldemort grabbed her elbow to steady her.

"Careful now. Careful. You don't wish to startle her," he spoke about the snake.

His touch was paper-thin, like being held in the wind's grasp. Now that she was standing right in front of him, she could see why Harry had always wanted to put as much distance between them as possible. It wasn't just the fear and the hatred. It was the disgust at being present to this awful carnage, this awful self-destruction. For Voldemort was peeling off every last bit of humanity and life there was left in him, and this vengeful suicide made her want to be cursed, to be killed and finished off, _anything_ not to witness the slow decay.

He pulled her to him and parted her hair from her shoulders.

And then, he slipped the locket around her neck.

"You shouldn't have taken it off."

Hermione sucked in a breath, a sweet, honeyed breath that never seemed to leave her lungs.

"I only want you to see me like this."

Her eyes lied, her senses betrayed.

_Tom._

He was standing in front of her, instead of Voldemort.

The same rueful curl on top of his forehead, the same red mouth whose smirk drew earthly shadows on his blooming face.

His solid body, strong, young, sprite, feline.

If she took off the locket she knew she would see Voldemort again.

But if she kept the poison to her heart, she would have him forever.

"I told you, you draw incorrect conclusions."

He ran a hand through her wild hair, tugging at the knots until she yelped in pain. He had both hands in her locks now and was pulling her head towards him. Their foreheads touched.

"Remember what I told you."

Their minds seemed to mold under the skin.

His words, so long ago spoken, yet so fresh in her ears.

_I will keep you for myself. It will be only you and me. The rest will be bodies and fire and filth. I'm only keeping you. Just you. Alive. Because you are my dirty little mudwhore. You are the filth under my feet. I won't be alone anymore. I made that mistake once. No. This time, I want to __**indulge**__. I want to taste your tainted skin whenever I like, I want to drink your foul blood as I please, and make you taste yourself too. I want to fuck you over a sea of corpses. _

Hermione exhaled shakily. He swallowed her breath.

"As long as you wear me around your neck, you shall be Queen."

She wanted to move her head away, escape his thoughts, but their foreheads still kissed, for an eternity it seemed.

"Queen of filth and dirt. Queen of foul blood and tainted skin. Queen of the corpses. The first of which will belong to the Snatchers."

He ran a finger across her broken lip and opened her mouth gently.

"Don't you crave it, little Mublood? Speak. Seize your crown of thorns."

_Queen. Queen. Queen._

Hermione closed her mouth around his thumb and sucked clumsily. It was the only way to stop the burning pain from her lip. The only way to give him back the venom. The snake had licked her. She would lick back.

Tom made a strangled noise in his throat. He had not expected her to taste him, to feel her tongue so rough and warm, soaked in her filthy essence.

It was he who usually initiated, who took and gave. He was startled by the thrill of pleasure running from his finger to the blackened morsel of his soul.

Hermione looked into his eyes and trembled an unspoken acceptance, although every limb in her body wanted to protest.

She let go of his finger and he inhaled sharply.

"Little Mudblood Queen. _My _Queen. Mine."


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N**: A particularly fucked-up episode for your reading pleasure. I'm glad to see some new faces and more reviews. Thanks to **anon, Guest1, Guest2, Guest3** and **Anon** (glad to have a blackout reader here!) for the anonymous reviewers.

As always, read with caution.

\- / -

* * *

_What do queens do_, she wondered?

In the fairy tales her mother read to her when she was growing her large front teeth, all the queens seemed to die.

In the history books she read at grammar school when her two front teeth embarrassed her the most, they were accused of adultery, and then died.

In the magical compendiums of the Hogwarts Library, they never existed.

Dead. ✓

Dead. ✓

Never even born. ✓

She closed her eyes and imagined that queen being born.

Her mind swallowed up details from images seen once or twice in museums, films, postcards, romance novels…

_Do the windows open and does the wind blow her dress all across the floor and do her stitches tear and do little cotton balls come out of her sleeves? Does she eat sugared mice, does she break them under her gums, does she pull away from a bearded king's kiss, does she lie under a robe while people kneel and watch?_

* * *

She dabbed the cold compress on her forehead gently, blowing stale air on the beads of sweat. The woman's smell was like reeds upon a stone which had been washed by too many seas. The beads did not dry. They only travelled further south.

Hermione was sick again. The woman held her waist while she heaved into a bucket. Her age was indefinable, like a Grecian urn that looks newly chipped. Hermione only caught a look of her black tresses, before she had to vomit again.

"Shh…it takes a long while for your blood to accept it," the woman spoke in a voice made of jingling bracelets and prickly briars. "Open your mouth and let the bad out. Only the good must stay."

Hermione listened and obeyed, because it felt true; the wretched bile seemed to slip out of her along with the sweat that would not stop wringing her skin. And what remained was a sensation like that of standing at dawn with your back to the sun.

The woman kept dabbing at her forehead. Her fingers reached inside her brains and caressed the muscles, made them easier to stretch. Hermione was grateful for the help.

"Do you feel the good?" the woman asked right in her ear.

Hermione spat once more into the bucket. She leaned against the woman, until her head was on her chest. She heard her own heartbeat gushing like a pistol, but the woman's was missing, or asleep.

A moment later, her head was on the pillow and the woman kissed her lips. They were chapped and dry, but soft and comfortable. Hermione could see the little splits where the red flesh cracked through the pink meat. The woman kissed her again, her tongue dashing out to caress her own lips. Hermione remained still, her mind still following the little splits of red flesh.

The woman raised her head and Hermione saw for the first time that half her face was covered in gold-green scales. How had she missed it? Perhaps because there had been no good light before. Now, someone had lit a lamp, or kindled a fire.

"Is something wrong?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

Hermione tried to lift her head from the pillow, but the weight of it all overwhelmed her. Thin metal strings were pulling her back against the mattress.

"Where is…Harry? And Ron? Are…are they safe?"

She dragged out the words to the point of exhaustion. She didn't want to speak anymore, but she had to, because she was all alone with a beautiful stranger and she wanted to hurl.

"Your friends are alive. But they are unwell. They only flop, like dead fish on the shore. They will soon stop breathing. You have a chance of being _well_, Hermione. You have a chance."

"Dead fish?" Hermione echoed, her limbs protesting the burn of her blood.

"The good will stay. The bad will go. I know you. You want to be good, don't you? You want to fight for the good."

The woman smiled a tremulous smile. Her scales did not shine, did not glow. They absorbed the light. But that seemed all right. She was common-looking and the little bags under her eyes bespoke of nights wasted caring for her. Hermione wanted to thank her, but the woman bent down again and kissed her again.

This time, Hermione let her break her lips apart with her tongue. The two mouths stood still for one moment, Hermione's half-open, hers a crescent moon. They breathed into each other, retch and reeds. The woman's tongue whorled up and down the inside of her jaws, like a restless fin, bedecking her teeth in juice. The tip of the woman's tongue reached the back of her throat, and Hermione felt the air get sliced. She choked and then accepted the tickling of her esophagus, accepted that there was something beyond that tongue that could flick up and down her membrane, inject her pores with a spider's silk, and she could do nothing but clench her legs and bear it.

Hermione's tongue rose up to meet hers, like two palms touching in prayer. She tried, at first, to push it out of her mouth tentatively, but when that did not work, Hermione opened her mouth wider and clenched her lips around the foreign tongue. The sucking was gentle, at first. But as she got used to the taste, Hermione began to drink more vigorously, until her membrane was filled up with silk.

She moaned. She wanted the bucket again. Craved it.

But the woman had pinned her hands over her head and was grinding her pelvis into her stomach.

Hermione raised her thighs to meet hers, but the contact made her start. She whimpered. She was touching a wet, slithering, muddy placenta. When she raised her leg, the snake coiled around one hip and the forked tongue dipped further down her gullet.

"You want to be good, don't you?" Nagini whispered right in her ear.

* * *

What do queens do?

Queens mate with animals. They share the living sap of the crawling critters. They hold up the snout and kiss it tenderly, slipping their tongues inside the feverish nostril. They cut off the creatures' claws and wear them as earrings.

* * *

Nagini was coiled around _her_ chair now. Tom smiled in a play of jealousy. "Ah, I see I have been easily replaced."

Hermione felt the snake's tail rest on her shoulder and inched a breath away, but did not remove it from her skin.

She held the book Tom had given her in her palms, but her eyes ran over the lines without seeing a single letter. There was something ciphered about it.

"I have heard you like Ancient Runes."

She must have, but now her mind was stuck on the word "Ancient". How old was he now? Was he young or old above measure?

"The venom should be coalescing with your blood soon and this discomfort will fade."

Hermione looked at the blue veins bulging at her wrist.

"There is no venom in the magical world that can coalesce with blood. That is the very essence of poison; it infiltrates the nervous system and only travels through blood out of necessity," Hermione recited mechanically, remembering old words, old schoolbooks.

Tom smiled, leaning his head against his seat. The locket dangled on his white shirt. She could see the alabaster skin through the opening. Fresh and inviting.

"Tell me more."

Hermione ran her fingers over the pages . She looked at the titles and observed the drawings. She turned it this way and that and inhaled its musky scent. She surveyed and perused, one side of her brain dazzled, another side asleep.

Finally, she frowned with disapproval.

"This is an apocryphal manuscript of Hoppal, The Multiplier. It only teaches you nonsense, like false morphemes and backwards semiotics…" she trailed off, fingering the spine with disgust and awe. "In 1761, a congress of wizards decided to burn all the copies. But when they set them on fire, the manuscript only multiplied. It was ...I think in 1916 when the last one was finally destroyed. Even transcripts of it are forbidden. This copy shouldn't exist."

Tom swallowed and she watched his Adam's apple bob up and down the length of his thick, smooth neck.

"I happened to have one lying around," he said, without pride or malice, as if he were simply stating a fact. But his eyes stirred playfully in their orbits. She could hear them glide over her body.

She opened the book at a different page. A drawing of Old Cyrillic engravings bled out into tiny stars on the bottom of the page. When she looked closer, they were grinning faces, shaped like insects. She let her fingers roam over the ink.

She was afraid to look further. Its crime was not multiplying; it was the pornography of errors that horrified the wizards of the past. Monsters and beasts were crammed in its pages. Deformities of language and thought.

"I happen to have a lot of discarded treasures that others saw fit to destroy. You could name them, sort them, give them a home. I like hearing you speak. Words roll off your tongue without forethought. As if you once engorged yourself with knowledge and it is slowly leaving you."

An image of a bucket at the foot of her bed made her insides twist, but she turned another page, and said,

"Then I won't be able to take care of your collection, will I?"

"Is that sarcasm, my little one? I meant no disrespect."

"You collect deviant magic because it appeals to you. I must be some kind of deviance too, in your eyes."

The resentment in her voice was palpable, but Tom only fingered the necklace and gave a rictus of a smile.

"I made you Queen of it all. Didn't I?"

She remembered. He had held her to him and called her queen of corpses and foul blood and tainted skin. It had seemed wonderful and searing at the time. It still did.

"So many vast dead worlds inside you…" he trailed off. "Your ancestors and their ancestors, too. All feeding on the same flesh. And somehow, a mistake was made along the way. A corruption. Magic and meat became one and _you_ were born, a happy accident. Like all Mudbloods. You should have never been, yet you are, and you are a good dream. Your species embodies the hope that, even after our extinction, _you_ will survive."

Hermione blinked, eyes almost watering from the perfumed incense wafting through the room.

"Is that why you hate us so much? Because you think we're immortal?"

"I think that you will outrun the rest of us and it horrifies me. The decrepit, born with magic straight from the source, are going to perish like the last indigenous members of an exotic tribe. And good riddance, I say. But you beasts of the night will outlast us, because you make something out of _nothing_. And that I cannot allow. No one must come after us. No one must live on."

Hermione put the book down on the floor. She twisted a lock of her hair. "You told me you'd make poison out of us." She could feel the pores closing shut with the spider's silk. "You told me we wouldn't live or die. Just be poison. Isn't that immortality too?"

Tom sighed wistfully. "Perhaps it is. Perhaps I cannot give you up completely. Perhaps I will reduce you to the very base of immortality. Evil."

Hermione wanted to laugh madly. For in the scheme of things, she had never considered that he saw himself as heroic, and she as immoral. She only smoothed her eyebrow and smiled with affliction.

"That's a foolish way of thinking."

Tom narrowed his eyes, his mouth curling up with vicious animosity. But it did not last. He smirked, licking the bridge of his teeth.

"Is it?"

"There is no one true source of magic. We were _all_ born making something out of nothing. I – I'm confident that the very first wizard or witch was Muggleborn. A Mudblood."

Tom contemplated her for a long moment. He brought the tips of his fingers together and looked at her through their triangle.

"My little Queen is bold."

Hermione pressed on, her lips quivering. "So when you say that I'm Queen of filth and dirt, unbeknownst, you mean I'm Queen of you and all the rest. Every single one of us is filth and dirt. And all of us would be reduced, finally, to what you call Evil."

"Are you saying, my sweet, that I am a Mudblood, like you?"

"…Yes."

She expected Tom to rage and spit fire, but instead he tilted his head back and laughed, delighted. His eyes sparked with joy, but a contaminated, awful merriment, the kind you saw on the faces of executioners after a beheading when the head is in the basket and the spool of blood congeals on the ground below.

"Bring him in!" he shouted over his shoulder.

Two Death-Eaters cloaked in dark robes dragged forth a clump of mangled flesh and deposited it at their feet.

When Hermione took a better look, she saw a human form. A young man, whose features had been marred by curses, whose body had been twisted by hexes, whose life was perhaps minutes away from ending. He had been tortured with almost unquenchable cruelty.

"I promised you the first corpse would belong to a Snatcher. Do you recognize him? He dared to touch you. Harm you."

_At your orders_, she thought bitterly.

Hermione only remembered the boots hitting her stomach. But as she looked at the poor creature laid before her, she felt a secret familiarity with the victim.

"His name is Scabior. And you will touch yourself while I wring the last drop of life out of him."

She flinched. Nagini's tail tapped her shoulder.

"N-no."

"Oh, yes. Because you are my Queen and she obeys her King."

Hermione shook her head, pulling her legs to her chest. The man's blood was dripping on the carpet.

"You will do it. After all, you have fed on the venom."

Hermione put a hand to her throat where she felt the silk crisscrossing her gullet.

"And, you love me," he added.

Hermione looked up, startled.

Tom's lip was turned down in a frown. His eyes were soft and wet, but their shadows laughed at her. "Don't you?"

Hermione held one fist to her mouth, clenched hard around an invisible locket. "You said I _wouldn't_ be poison. You said I'd be the exception."

Tom grinned with revolting pleasure. "And you said I am a Mudblood, like you. You have tried to infect me as well."

"I believed you." _It will be only you and me. The rest will be bodies and fire and filth. I'm only keeping you. Just you. Alive._

Tom snickered. "You did. And you will touch yourself too."

"Never."

"Always," he retorted.

"I won't be your weapon. I won't be - your snake."

"My sweet. You will be _whatever_ I tell you to be. You will live to weaken others. You will excrete my vengeance. You will embody Evil."

Hermione trembled from head to toe. Nagini coiled around her throat, kneading the skin, one yellow eye observing her with contempt and pity.

"And you will love me through it all," he finished with the growl of Voldemort. It dug deep into her core, making her knees buck.

Queens mate with animals. They share the living sap of the crawling critters. They hold up the snout and kiss it tenderly, slipping their tongues inside the feverish nostril. They cut off the creatures' claws and wear them as earrings.

Nagini slithered down her chest, leaving behind a cold trail. She landed on the floor, mouth parted in waiting, fangs as faint as needles.

Hermione placed a hand between her legs. In the hollow opening, where her thighs exhaled warmth.

Tom hummed in appreciation. His wand was already rubbing against his fingers.

Scabior screamed.

Hermione's lips opened with a pop as her fingers found the right spot.

"Let it not be said I am a bad King. One day you might see a loved face lying there at your feet. But it won't be Harry Potter's. I promise you that. I promise you that will be a clean death." He twisted his wand and Scabior screeched like a trapped bird.

Hermione closed her eyes and sighed as she inserted one finger within. The spider's silk was connecting the limbs, making each muscle strong and hard. She felt her veins boil beneath her skin. If she threw herself in the fire, would she also multiply, like Hoppal's manuscript? What other treasures did he have for her? Her mind was hungry. Harry Potter would get a clean death. She felt relief. And pleasure.

Scabior begged and cried out in shame.

She felt a thrill.

"Look at me," he demanded.

She opened her eyes.

Before Scabior's eyes turned into still glass, he took his locket off, and at the moment of death, Hermione climaxed, looking upon Voldemort.

She tilted her head back and groaned in satisfaction, but did not avert her eyes.

In the last throes of passion, she understood. He may have been a decrepit, decaying old man without power, a pitiful effigy that could not touch her, but Voldemort was a man. Tom was a boy.

She felt disgust rise in her throat. She swallowed it down.

Because it was not just disgust.

It was lust.


End file.
